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Michiel Horn's the League for Social Reconstruction, Reflecting More Than Ten Years of Research, Is a Book That Possesses an Outstanding Depth and Scope

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Michiel Horn's the League for Social Reconstruction, Reflecting More Than Ten Years of Research, Is a Book That Possesses an Outstanding Depth and Scope 168 ARCHIVARIA poor for example - its impact on these groups may well have been much more substantial. In any event, lacking a reliable body of quantifiable evidence, Bilson has relied largely upon literary sources, diaries and correspondence, petitions and reports, minutes and memoranda, and has supplemented them with a careful reading of colonial newspapers and medical journals - the stuff of traditional historical enquiry. The information so laboriously gleaned from this broadly-based enquiry has been pieced together in a faith- ful description of the course of the epidemics and their extensive social, administrative, and political repercussions. As is so often the case, the past has not left us all that we should like to know about cholera in nineteenth century British North America. But Bilson has salvaged more than we could reasonably expect, and has given us a compel- ling portrait of a Canada which, until now, we have not seen. W. Peter Ward Department of History University of British Columbia The League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the Left in Canada, 1930- 1942. MICHIEL HORN. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980. ix, 278 p. ISBN 0 8020 5487 0 $20.00. Michiel Horn's The League for Social Reconstruction, reflecting more than ten years of research, is a book that possesses an outstanding depth and scope. While far too many authors on the Canadian Left have followed the well-worn path of the protest move- ment becalmed model, dichotomizing a movementlparty tension in the CCF and dwell- ing upon historical records at the Public Archives of Canada, Horn has chosen the largely unexplored but important topic of the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) and has opted to conduct extensive research at a great number of archives throughout Canada. Augmented by an impressive array of interviews and textual analysis of LSR publications, the result is a book that is extremely informative for layman and scholar alike, sensible in its conclusions and, rare for an academic, very readable. Horn's major thesis is that despite the relatively brief life span of the LSR, the decade 1932-1942, the LSR contributed a great deal to Canadian society. It left a permanent imprint on progressive Canadian intellectual thought in the areas of the welfare state and socialism. The LSR particularly pioneered in applying socialism to federalist and agrarian settings. On these two themes, the LSR was far ahead of its British counter- part, the Fabian Society. It also greatly assisted the growth of important Canadian insti- tutions such as the Canadian Forum, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and indirectly the CCF's successor, the New Democratic Party. Through overlapping memberships many prominent LSR figures were also instrumental in the activities of the Fellowship For a Christian Social Order, the Canadian Institute of International Af- fairs, the Canadian Radio League and the Civil Liberties Union. Horn's work thus pro- vides useful insights into the early history of a substantial number of Canadian organi- zations. In the absence of any biographies elsewhere on Frank Underhill, F.R. Scott, Eugene Forsey, David Lewis, Harry Cassidy, King Gordon, George Grube, Leonard Marsh, Escott Reid, and Graham Spry, Horn's mini-biographies on the aforementioned are a positive start to increasing the covering on these important Canadian figures. As an historian, Horn is quite successful at placing the LSR in the immediate social context and at drawing insights for the contemporary period. No chapter is more ger- mane and sobering than that dealing with attacks upon academic freedom and civil liberties. E. Forsey, C. King, K. Gordon, F. Underhill and F.R. Scott resisted such pres- BOOK REVIEWS 169 sures by right-wing forces and our liberties, in part, are due to the efforts of such LSR figures. Today, as then, our liberties seem in jeopardy and vigilence is as necessary as ever. As a political scientist reviewing Horn's book, it is evident that he is strongest as a social historian and weakest in his efforts to provide textual analysis of political themes in LSR publications. Given Horn's efforts throughout the book to provide an evalua- tion in a contemporary setting, he should have dwelt more upon the excessive centralism of the LSR's proposals and have offered more detailed criticisms. His assertion that LSR figures "were not unconscious of the dangers of bureaucratization" (p. 86) lacks sufficient documentation and for good reason. Unfortunately, Canadian socialism had no equivalent of the British decentralist guild socialists, who were able to present an alternative socialist vision to the centralism and elitism of the Fabians. Horn is also incorrect in his assertion that Social Planning For Canada contains no references to Marx. Actually, there is one solitary reference, but this is a minor mistake. More impor- tantly, Horn is quite accurate in noting the non-Marxian orientation of the LSR. The FCSO and the LSR gave the Canadian left a decidedly social gospel orientation. Horn justifiably criticizes recent efforts by some Marxist academics to rewrite history and deny the legitimacy of this variant of Canadian socialism. It is historically inaccurate to dismiss the LSR and the CCF as 'mere liberals in a hurry'. They were committed to sub- stantial public ownership, state planning, an abolition of class inequality and the emer- gence of a more 'co-operative commonwealth'. Perhaps the most serious disagreement with Horn is over his portrayal of J.S. Woodsworth. Several times Underhill's urging that the CCF become a centralized party with full-time staff is contrasted with Woodsworth's decentralism (pp. 47, 60, 127). Echoing many other authors on the CCF, Horn downplays Woodsworth's willingness, when necessary, to be a firm party leader stressing party discipline and the powers of central party officials. In 1934 Woodsworth purged the entire Ontario CCF provincial council and at the joint LSR-CCF meeting of 28 March 1936, Woodsworth consistently "stressed the need for greater discipline, and if necessary, expulsion of disloyal members". A more balanced account of Woodsworth is long overdue. It is disappoint- ing that Horn did not rectify this imbalance. Despite the aforementioned criticisms, Horn's League for Social Reconstruction stands as an outstanding scholarly work on the early history of the democratic left in Canada. As well written as Walter Young's Anatomy of a Party, it deserves wider distri- bution and should be printed as a paperback. Alan Whitehorn Department of Political and Economic Science Royal Military College of Canada History of Canadian Cities. Edited by ALAN F.J. ARTIBISE. Toronto: James Lorimer in cooperation with the National Museum of Man. Alan F.J. Artibise, Winnipeg : An Illustrated History (1977). 224 p. ISBN 0 8862 150 7 bd. $24.95, 0 8862 151 5 pa. $1 1.95. Max Foran, Calgary : An Illustrated History (1978). 192 p. ISBN 0 8862 233 3 bd. $24.95. Patricia E. Roy, Vancouver : An Illustrated History (1980). 190 p. ISBN 0 8862 388 7 bd. $24.95. Is it possible to capture the spirit of a city in words and photographs? Given that a city develops in response to its geography and its population, and that the population in- .
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